RUTHFULLY YOURS

By ABDUL JALIL MUSTAFA | ARAB NEWS

Published: Feb 13, 2011 00:10 Updated: Feb 13, 2011 00:10

AMMAN: US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns held talks on Saturday with Jordanian leaders, who warned that Israel’s obstinacy in Middle East peace talks would only aggravate the “anger” of the region’s peoples.

Burns met with King Abdallah, Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh to discuss ways to surmount the deadlock in the Middle East peace process and latest developments in the region, a reference to the Egyptian uprising that toppled pro-West President Hosni Mubarak.

“Israel should give up the fortress mentality and stop all unilateral actions particularly the building of settlements,” Bakhit told Burns, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

“Israel should look forward to the future and realize that justice and dignity of peoples are an indispensable issue and that the continued deadlock in the peace process will only enhance the anger of peoples in the region as a result of their feeling of an imbalance in the criteria of justice,” said Bakhit, a former ambassador in Israel.

Bakhit formed his cabinet earlier this week after King Abdallah sacked the government of Prime Minister Samir Rifai under the pressure of a series of protests that swept the country over the past weeks and found inspiration from the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

He told the American envoy that his government ”realized the regional changes and was taking measures to speed up the political and economic reforms” and take serious steps to fight corruption.

King Abdallah also held a separate meeting on Saturday with the Russian Middle East envoy Alexander Sultanov. ¬